Greek Music

 Greek music has played a massive role in the formation of Greek culture. From ancient to modern times, even though Greek music has modified, it still is a very unique art.  Greek music does not only differentiate from other countries' music, but also from region to region in Greece herself. The main categories into which Greek traditional music is divided are the dimotika tragoydia, the nisiotika, the kantades and last but not least, the rebetika.  The Greek folk songs, otherwise called dimotika, are known and played all across Greece, Cyprus and even some regions of Turkey where a lot of Greeks live, and they are said to derive from Ancient Greek music, where poetry and music were unseparated.  The nisiotika is the general term that includes the different music by which each Greek island is characterized. Each island has an individual que type of music which they listen to and perform on different ceremonies, especially those of joy, such as marriages or baptisms....

Ancient Greeks considered music a form of art that was multidimensional, since it brought them together, it shaped their identities, it helped them expressed their emotions, it formed their "ethos" etc. In this post I will be referring to some of the instruments used to create music back in those times. The Ancient Greek instruments can be divided into three main categories; string, wind and percussion/drum.  The String Instruments: The most well known String Instruments are the lyre and the kithara (guitar). The lyre was used for the education of the youth in coordination with the aulos and was associated with Zeus himself. Other String Instruments constitute the harp, the kanonaki and the barbiton. This kind of instruments were played with the fingers and so they were favored, since they allowed the performer to sing while playing. lyre The Wind Instruments:  On the other hand, the wind instruments were played by blowing air or by requiring the flow of water. The aulos repr...

 Music was a significant part of Ancient Greek life. It accompanied them in their everyday activities, in different occasions such as rituals and ceremonies, where they had to express their feelings of, for example, grief or joy. Music was considered to be a form of communication, a unifying symbol while it simultaneously contributed to the shaping of people's identities. Iliad and Odyssey are two of the most well known poems of Ancient Greek history and culture. Even in modern times, these poems are studied all around the world for the foundational cultural messages that are shared through them. Some of those messages are the importance of a leader respecting his/her soldiers, the significance of family bonds, the greatness of honorable acting, and many more other moral concepts and values that contributed, and continue to contribute, to the formation of people's "ethos". However, the first people who were influenced by them were obviously the Ancient Greeks. Iliad a...